A while back I drafted the attached – and I would welcome your comments. It is based on the Model Constitution from NSW Dept of Fair Trading – so it fits all the rules. The places where I have made changes are highlighted in yellow. I’ve tried to make it easy to hold meetings electronically, etc.

Should we aim to have an AGM late June, so that the Constitution can be adopted from 1 July 2012?

Regards,

Ray Rice

XC VP WSMTB

Maybe a little back ground of why NSWMTB was setup in the first place.

Traditionally loose group of club members/officials banded together to organise state series. "Organise" being a broad term. Basically emails would go around pleading with clubs to hold a round and it was up to each individual club to pick a date and organise a race how they saw fit.

Then along came people like Steve Humphries who drove things to become a little more consistent with set dates and minimum timing requirements and the like. The seeds of NSWMTB were planted.

The other main driving factor was the State Development Fund. This is made up from a portion on MTBA membership fees and is suppose to go back to the states for "projects of lasting benefit."

The catch was before the money could be spent every club in the state had to unanimously agree. With so many diverse clubs in NSW it was hard enough to get every club to reply let along agree.

Other states (WA) had set up a model whereby a State body was setup and that body could then choose where to spend their SDF.

NSWMTB was formed in this way with every MTBA member for NSW automatically a member of NSWMTB and welcome to nominate for a position on the committee.
AGM were held in conjunction with state championship, but poorly attended (Biggest crowd was a at Lithgow where a few riders wandered in by mistake and decided to stay for the meeting....)

The goalpost seemed to change a few times but we eventually got the first lot of SDF moneys however difficulties in getting approvals to access further funds were hampered by our lack of incorporation.

So here we are today. We need to incorporate

Attached is a draft constitution. Please read over it and comment below

Steve can you list some of the projects the SDF funds have been utelised for so far?

From memory the were some coaching clinics and talk of junior development?

Good luck with it. I think that this is a very important step for mountain biking in NSW and I'd hope that a NSW chapter of IMBA can be established from this as well. Despite having a significant number of mountain bikers and advocacy issues happening in NSW at any one time we certainly don't seem to get the time required from IMBA Au. The process of becoming incorporated is very quick, easy and relatively cheap. You guys who have started a club will already know that. Getting the tax exempt status takes a while so that a non-profit bank account (with no/minimal fees) can be set up.

Is 10 members present for a quorum too many, especially if those viewing electronically don't count? It's a good number of people to have, but how likely is it to happen that 10 members will actually attend?